I’d worked for him in his dance studio and we’d lived together. So, walking out on him meant losing my home and my job in one day. The bastard had actually tried to get me to stay at the studio teaching, and when I refused, he started the rumor that I was difficult to work with, among other things.
“Well you need to test drive something and if it isn’t Killian or another guy then definitely a new car. I was scared the other day my feet would fall through the floor.”
I laughed. “It’s not that bad.” But it was. I just couldn’t consider buying anything until I had a job. Mars had no idea how bad it was, but since I no longer had a working cell as of yesterday, she’d know soon enough.
“Fred Flinstone wouldn’t even drive it.”
We were giggling when Olivia arrived with three fruity drinks that had umbrellas sticking out the top. “What’s so funny?” she asked.
“Savvy refused to get on her knees and suck off Kite from Tear Asunder when he asked her to,” Mars blurted.
I rolled my eyes.
“Kite? You met him?” Olivia’s eyes were like saucers. “And he asked you to go down on him?”
“Oh. My. God. Nooo.” I glared at Mars. “Don’t start rumors.”
Olivia plopped the drinks on the table then slid into the booth beside Mars. She was Mars’s friend from Dwight’s Interiors, an interior decorating company where they worked. Olivia was married to a nice guy, lived in the suburbs and was a total sweetheart. She also had gorgeous, thick blonde hair that always looked like she’d just came from the hairdressers, and brilliant blue eyes. She carried extra weight but carried it in all the right places, and I’d seen the guys’ eyes following her when we walked through the club. They watched Mars too, who was Olivia’s complete opposite with dark, shoulder-length hair. And while being slim, she walked with a sexy sway to her hips. But she was conservative in that she wore nothing too revealing.
I stirred my new drink with the straw. “The first part is accurate. I met him. But the second is definitely not.”
“You know he is supposedly into kink.” Mars accentuated the word kink. “And he liked Savvy in high school.”
Olivia’s thin pink lips formed a big round O as her eyes darted from Mars to me. “Wow. You guys went to school with him?”
“Briefly,” I said. “And he didn’t like me.” I directed that to Mars. “He was pissed at me for going to an underground fight.”
“You went to an underground fight? I didn’t even know those were real.” Olivia’s eyes were huge and moving from me to Mars and back again while she sucked on her red-and-white straw.
Mars told Olivia the story. Wide-eyed, she was captivated; Olivia had grown up in a small town in Northern Ontario and going to an illegal fight was completely out of her element.
What I’d never told anyone, even Mars, was about that kiss at the cemetery. I probably would’ve if I hadn’t left town, but when it happened, I’d been upset about my mom, scared about what was going to happen to me, and couldn’t even process what happened with Killian.
Mars and I lost touch for a few months while I was shuffled around by social services to different foster homes until I ended up with Ms. Evert. She was the one who helped nurture the orchid Killian had given me. It finally bloomed a beautiful red, and I still had it sitting on my kitchen windowsill in the same cracked pink pot. It was the only thing that I’d taken with me from home to home. Although, I wouldn’t call them homes; they were more like pit stops until Ms. Evert. But she’d passed away five years ago and even though I hadn’t known her long, she’d been my only family.
“Are you going to date him?” Olivia’s long blonde hair slipped over her shoulder and half laid on the table as she leaned forward sipping her drink.
Mars huffed. “Kite doesn’t date. And I heard he makes the women he fucks sign a nondisclosure agreement. Oh, and he’s never been seen with a girlfriend. Besides, Savvy would never be gagged, tied up, and spanked.”
Olivia choked on her drink and spat out her straw. “He’s into that?”
“Mars, you don’t know that. The media exaggerates.”
Mars shrugged. “Why would they make that up?” She put up her hands. “Just sayin’.”
I’d never done anything like that, and David was pretty routine when it came to sex. Boring might be the optimal word. Looking back, the sex had become nonexistent, not because we were busy teaching at the dance studio, but because he was busy with one of the students who he was now living with.
The idea of Killian tying me up, him naked and hovering above me, those magnificent green eyes smoldering as he thrust his hips and… I sucked too hard on the straw and choked on the cool fruity liquid.